Heads up -- Rankin Inlet masterworks
John Kavik (1897-1993) and John Tiktak (1916-81)
were the premier first-generation sculptors in Rankin Inlet. One wonders what their work would have looked like if they had lived in Cape Dorset, with its brilliant green serpentinite that was relatively easy to carve and to polish. Instead, their raw material was steatite, which is much harder to carve and to polish. Lyta Josephie, who moved from Lake Harbour (which shares a quarry with Cape Dorset) to Arviat (near Rankin Inlet), said, "When I came to Arviat . . . I thought the carvings were half done and they were so rough." (Northern Rock, p. 111)
Ingo Hessel writes in
Inuit Modern:
"The hunters and other figures of Kavik . . . are both the crudest and the most energetic [of the early Keewatin carvers]; they are sawn, rasped and drilled to form raw, elemental forms. Tiktak's faces and figures range from the subtly carved and coolly elegant to the starkly expressive." The Tiktak head shown above and the Kavik head shown below are perfect illustrations of Hessel's comments.
